Add on that Meredith and I are trying to eat much more healthily and this becomes quite a challenge. We decided on Indian but this was also hard as tomatoes seem to be everywhere!!! I mean, we had to search through tons of recipes for ones that didn't call for them in the first place.

But, we ended up with:

Saag (Palak?) Panner

Homemade very low fat paneer

Lentil Soup

Roasted Cauliflower

Panner

I'll get to the saag panner soon, but first just the paneer. We wanted to make it low fat since otherwise, it is like eating cheese and that is a ton of points. By the way, in the future, we could do tofu in place of paneer and save a ton of calories and ease. But no soy for this meal.

However, we went with 1% (hence the really low fat but not quite fat free). We made some other changes as we went including:

1% milk

Used an extra 1/4 cup of plain yogurt (1/2 cup total)

Total 2.5 Tbsp lemon juice

Forgot to rinse until a bit after it was hanging (But it didn't taste lemony)

The thing that really amazed me was low little it made. As you can see in the photos below, it made all of 7.25 ounces out for 1/2 gallon 1% milk (73 oz.). That is insane! You can see how much whey is left too (we saved some for other uses).

Oh, next time, I will use a larger pan. Once the milk started to boil, it made a huge mess!

Saag Paneer

Again, we really struggled to find a recipe that didn’t call for (and seem to rely on) tomatoes. But eventually went with Vegetarian Times (Local).

We followed the recipe pretty closely except:

Used 1/2 plain and 1/2 greek yogurt. Also turned the heat way down when adding them so as to not curdle it

Used 2 Thai peppers and kept the seeds

Forgot salt until the end.

Olive oil instead of ghee. And less of it

It worked out ok. Mostly tasted like sautéed spinach with a strong flavor of ginger and coriander. Essentially, like Indian sautéed spinach but not saag paneer. I think this is one of the recipes that really do benefit from heavy cream, etc. I do not know if I would attempt saag paneer again unless I am willing to use the cream.

Lentil Soup

We again struggled with the tomatoes, but eventually ended up with this Food.com recipe (Local) recipe. Actually, this was doubly difficult since we struggled to find vegetable (or vegetarian chicken) broth without tomatoes (see the photo below).

On the soup, we also stayed pretty true to the recipe except that we

Quickly toasted the seasonings before adding the broth

Skipped the blender. It didn't need it and was already kind of mushy

Served lemon on the side instead of in it

No additional salt and pepper

Simmered with the lid on (no guidance in the recipe)

We used all of the regular broth and half of the low sodium. It was pretty simple. Maybe a bit mushy but not bad. I think if we made this one again, we would go light on the cardamom. That flavor was a bit too strong.

Roasted Cauliflower

We did our regular Curry Roasted Cauliflower Recipe again with the Tandoor Chicken Masala (same as used on 2015-11-11). We made a ton of it. Probably 2.5 heads worth. It was so much that, for the first time, I didn't finish what was left.

Also, I do not know if we didn't need it before or used it and forgot to note it, but we didn't add salt and it was missed. Good otherwise. Nice char and, as usual, lots of flavor